#HRTechChat: Make Work Better with Betterworks' Doug Dennerline & Jamie Aitken

Both my guests for this episode have appeared on the #HRTechChat video podcast previously - and it only made sense to host the two of them this time, at the same time. Why? Betterworks CEO Doug Dennerline and Vice President of HR Transformation Jamie Aitken have co-authored and published a book titled "Make Work Better," and our discussion revolved around it. Let's get something out of the way first. Employers have six ways to Sunday to make work better: make scheduling better for work-life balance, make onboarding better for immediate employee engagement (and faster time-to-productivity), make payroll better so employees get paid incorrectly less often, make on-the-job learning better so staff can build their careers... Have I missed anything? Probably, and we've been talking about how to make work better for years. Over 10 years ago, when I worked with executives at one of the well-known vendors of technology for workforce management, we argued (correctly) in our thought leadership that you could make work better for retail associates by modernizing WFM systems. The list goes on. You could start anywhere to make work better. One of the best places to start to make work better, however, is by upending tired old approaches to measuring and assessing employees' performance. More specifically, the central tenet of Doug and Jamie's book is that you can make work much, much better by dispensing with performance management that revolves around the tedious annual performance review. We've all heard the tongue-in-cheek term, The beatings will continue until morale improves. Well, what are we doing? We can do better than rely on an approach developed by the U.S. military early in the last century and specifically for military scenarios. As for the private sector, "massive research shows that it doesn't change performance," Doug said. "It's a ridiculous thing. Yet people still do it. So, this book was aimed at helping people understand the value of making the change, and giving them a bit of a roadmap on what happens when you do that" and insight into "the profound impact it has on companies that are brave enough to make the change." What kind of organization doesn't want performance to improve? What's great about leaving the traditional annual review behind is that employees' performance finally does improve -- the goal all along. New approaches aided by the state of the art in cloud software for this (like Betterworks) promote regular dialogue between managers and their direct reports, result in greater workforce engagement overall, and elevate the caliber of leadership throughout the organization. Over time, in fact, turning away from the old ways of performance management can be an important precursor to organizational transformation -- and HR transformation, certainly. Traditionally (and tellingly), HR departments have always measured success vis-à-vis performance management in simple terms of completions -- "as opposed to impact, what is it that you're trying to achieve?" Jamie said. "Well, it's not just 'check the box.' We need to have a completely different way of showing up for our employees. We need to be thinking about different ways to get them engaged, and focused." HR departments end up escaping this cost-center-reinforcing mentality and, armed with rich data on workforce performance and engagement, elevate their own standing with organizational leadership. Getting out of the past and into the future of work with their performance management, in other words, is good all around for everyone involved. For an example of how this plays out, watch this episode of #HRTechChat from last summer, when we interviewed Betterworks user Jeff Andes, vice president of talent management at University of Phoenix. And I almost forgot: another member of leadership at Betterworks appeared on the podcast last year. In the meantime, and as always, Doug and Jamie were great guests.